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Friday, September 13, 2013

The Best And Worst Performing Assets Since Lehman Are...

No surprises here: Silver and Gold are the best, Banks and Greece - worst.

In USD terms:

And in local currency terms:

DB's commentary:

As one might have expected, on a total return basis (all in $ terms), Silver (100%) and Gold (73%) were the top two performers followed by European HY (60%), US HY (58%) and the S&P 500 (50%). Core rates have also done well as central banks propped up the fixed income markets by artificially keeping interest rates low for many years (even with the recent sell-off). Bunds, Treasuries, and Gilts managed to gain 23%, 20% and 20% respectively over the 5-year period. Despite the wobbles this year, EM equities and bonds are still up 33% and 29% over the same period as they have benefited from global liquidity and a mostly favourable growth outlook relative to DM. At the other end of the performance spectrum, Greek equities, down -66% since the Lehman bankruptcy to rank as the worst performer in our sample, are clearly still bearing the brunt of the European sovereign crisis. This is followed by the Stoxx600 Banks index (-30%), the FTSEMIB (-30%), and the Bovespa (-20%). The overall picture though is one of positive returns for most asset classes. We should add that this period ties in with our 5yr rolling nominal global growth being at the lowest since the 1930s so the performance of financial assets is almost entirely down to liquidity and not growth. Food for thought as tapering starts before growth has proved it’s self-sustaining.